A news
article appeared
in today's edition of the New York Post that deals with yet another
spy scandal involving interpreters who had been born outside the United
States and then lawfully immigrated to the United States and ultimately
acquired United States citizenship via the naturalization process.

This
news report was forwarded to me earlier today by a good friend and a founding
member of 9/11 Families for a Secure America, Bruce DeCell. Bruce is a
former New York City police officer whose son-in-law was one of many people
who were slaughtered at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
I am, as you may know, a volunteer advisor to Bruce's organization.

The
news article reports on a number of interpreters being actively investigated,
who are working at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as were
other such spies who were discovered in 2003.

Let
me, once again, make my position as clear as I can. Many aliens who legally
immigrate to the United States and are naturalized are loyal American
citizens. My own mother who died of breast cancer more than 40 years ago
when I was attending Brooklyn College was a wonderful example of an immigrant
who loved this country. I can assure you that the great majority of such
naturalized citizens have a great love for our nation.

The
problem is that there are, unfortunately, those immigrants whose presence
in our country represents a threat to national security. Among such malevolent
individuals are those who have exploited their position of trust in our
nation that their certificate of United States citizenship represents.
These individuals have become citizens of our nation and, because they
possess foreign language skills that are of great importance to our nation
and that are in short supply, have parlayed their United States citizenship
and language abilities into jobs that provide them with access to our
nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

I have
previously written about a Lebanese woman, Nada Nadim Prouty who committed
immigration fraud by entering into a marriage of convenience that initially
provided her with lawful immigrant status and ultimately, United States
citizenship. As I have noted previously, she became an FBI special agent
and then a CIA and used her position of trust at those agencies to apparently
spy on our government for Hezbollah.

Today's
news article shows how interpreters, in acting as the eyes, ears and mouths
of military, law enforcement and intelligence officers at Guantanamo have
gained access to the terror suspects being confined at Guantanamo. The
news report makes it clear that this access enables the interpreters to
alter or eliminate certain responses that those in custody have given
when questioned by our officials.

These
duplicitous interpreters have also disrupted the interrogation process
by passing information to the detainees at Gitmo and have provided them
with advice on how to make allegations against their interrogators and
otherwise undermine efforts aimed at punishing those who slaughtered three
thousand innocent victims on September 11, 2001 and possibly thwart future
terrorist attacks.

The
well documented failures of USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration
Services) to create a bureaucracy that provides appropriate immigration
benefits to those aliens who are truly deserving and entitled to those
benefits while identifying, investigating and denying the applications
for benefits filed by aliens who are committing fraud and/or are involved
in terrorist or criminal schemes that endanger the lives of our citizens
and compromises the security of our nation, make it crystal clear that
USCIS needs to be be made to function as more than a high-speed assembly
line where its employees are praised for moving the applications quickly
and where the integrity of the process is all but ignored, and in fact,
is all too often seen as an impediment to apparent primary goal of clearing
up backlogs of applications.

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United
States Rear Admiral David Glasgow Farragut is remembered for his orders
during the Civil War at the Battle of Mobile Bay that are paraphrased
by the exclamation: "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"

At USCIS
it would certainly appear that those in charge of that inept and beleaguered
agency are instructing their subordinates, "Damn the fraud and danger
to national security, full speed ahead!"

Of course
Admiral Farragut's orders to his men represented courage and determination
while at USCIS expediency rules- but at what cost?

Time
and time again the GAO and the Office of the Inspector General have issued
reports of investigations that paint a clear picture of incompetence and
ineptitude at an agency that adjudicates applications for a variety of
immigration benefits including the conferring of resident alien status
and even United States citizenship upon aliens. Immigration benefit fraud
is hardly a "victimless crime." All too often immigration fraud,
in its various guises compromises national security and in many ways imperils
the citizens of our nation. Immigration fraud also encourages still more
fraud and makes honest aliens seeking to lawfully immigrate to the United
States wait on the back of huge lines.

Immigration
fraud has been identified by the 9/11 Commission as an entry and embedding
tactic of aliens involved in terrorism. Yet little is really done to combat
this huge and insidious threat to our nation.

Immigration
fraud was a major issue during the Amnesty of 1986 that was enacted during
the Reagan Administration. Immigration fraud was a major issue during
Citizenship USA or "CUSA" a program created by the Cinton Administration
to seek to naturalize more than a million aliens over a relatively short
period of time. The GAO noted that perhaps as many as 100,000 of the aliens
who were naturalized never should have been naturalized and, in fact,
a significant number of them should probably been deported.

Worth
considering is the fact CUSA was created years after the terrorist attacks
of 1993- the January 1993 attack at the CIA by a citizen of Pakistan,
Amir Kansi, who successfully gamed the immigration benefits program and
receive political asylum by filing a fraud laden application. Kansi repaid
our nation for its kindness by standing outside the CIA headquarters in
Langley, Virginia on January 25, 1973, with an AK-47 and gunned down two
CIA officers and seriously wounded three others. The very next month the
World Trade Center was bombed by a number of Middle Eastern Terrorists
including Ramzi Yousef, Mahmoud Abouhalima, Nidal Ayyad, Mohammad Salameh,
Abdul Rahman Yasin and Ahmad Ajaj.

Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), in addition to being the alleged mastermind of
the attacks of September 11, 2001 is alleged to have financed this first
attack on the World Trade Center that was carried out on February 26,
1993.

As I
noted on previous occasions, including when I have testified before Congressional
hearings, Mahmoud Abouhalima acquired amnesty as an agricultural worker
during the 1986 Amnesty. He never worked on any farm but, rather, drove
a cab and had his driver's license suspended on numerous occasions for
a variety of vehicle and traffic law violations. In fact the only thing
he was ever found to have planted was a bomb in the basement of the World
Trade Center that left 6 people dead, hundreds- if not thousands of people
injured, and an estimated one half billion dollars in damages inflicted
to that iconic fixture of the New York City Skyline that was reduced to
rubble, along with the victims who were trapped in that complex and the
airliners that struck them, as a result of the attacks of September 11,
2001.

Time
and time again, spies, terrorists and criminals have been shown to have
easily committed immigration fraud and yet, our government has done absolutely
nothing to plug this major leak that compromises the survival of our citizens
and our nation!

In fact,
this very same screwed up agency, USCIS, would be the agency that would
be called upon to administer Comprehensive Immigration Reform if the duplicitous
"leaders of our nation jammed this insane program down our throats!

There
is a stock brokerage firm that includes a disclaimer in its radio advertisements
that essentially says that previous performance is no guarantee of future
performance. Perhaps where profits in the highly volatile stock market
is concerned, this disclaimer makes sense.

Where
immigration and the DHS (Department of Homeland Surrender) is concerned,
I believe that previous performance all but guarantees future performance.
If the inept and incompetent USCIS is put in charge of Comprehensive Immigration
Reform, (A program I wrote about in an Op-Ed for the Washington Times
over two years ago in which I stated that the truly descriptive name for
that legislative detritus should be the "Terrorist Assistance and
Facilitation Act," there would be absolutely no reason to not expect
more of the same incompetence, nonfeasance, misfeasance and malfeasance!

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As those
of you who are familiar with my writing (and speaking style) know that
I like to use analogies in order to substantiate my position. When you
consider how profoundly flawed the immigration benefits program is I want
you to first of all to think of the Naturalization Certificate that is
emblematic of the conferring of United States citizenship upon an alien,
to represent the "keys to the kingdom."

Keeping
that in mind, I want you to think about how parking garages that employ
attendants who park your car for you almost always conspicuously post
warning signs telling their patrons to only leave the ignition key and
nothing else when they leave their car with the attendants. This is done
to make certain that the attendants will not have access to the glove
compartment or the trunk of the car. Furthermore, the reason for not leaving
the house key with the car is to make certain that a possibly larcenous
attendant would not be able to make a copy of the house key and then find
out the address the key relates to by making an inquiry of the Department
of Motor Vehicles to determine the address where the car is registered.
Once a bad guy had the key and the address it related to, it would be
a simple matter for him to show up when no one is home and simply unlock
the front door and walk right on in without breaking a window.

This
is certainly a commonsense approach to personal security. The idea is
to keep the keys to the home of the patrons of the parking garage secure.

When
I first began working for the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service)
in 1971 aliens who applied for United States citizenship had to provide
two witnesses who would attest to the "Good Moral Conduct" of
the alien seeking to become a United States citizen. The INS had a squad
of investigators who would actually go out into the communities and conduct
Good Moral Conduct (GMC) investigations of aliens who applied for United
States citizenship. It was not enough that an alien had not been convicted
of committing felonies, his (her) investigation had to demonstrate that
the alien in question was a decent person who didn't beat his wife or
kids, didn't frequent brothels or otherwise demonstrate a lack of good
moral conduct.

Back
then only INS employees, virtually all of whom were attorneys, who had
many years of government service were allowed to adjudicate those applications.

Back
then, United States citizenship really meant something! There were clear
distinctions between what it was to be a United States citizen, a resident
alien, a temporary visitor or an illegal alien.

Today
our nation's "leaders" engage in deceptive language that is
designed to blur these important distinctions. Illegal aliens are now
referred to as undocumented workers. Alien Registration Cards are now
referred to as PERM's (God forbid we should use the legally accurate and
entirely descriptive term "Alien.")

By the
way, the term "Alien" is absolutely not a pejorative. The definition
of an alien as noted in the Immigration and Nationality Act is: "Any
person who is not a citizen or national of the United States." The
problem is not that the term "alien" is demeaning or insulting-
it is that it is accurate and represents a clear definition- something
the open borders advocates hate! The issue is not that the illegal aliens
are living in the shadows as the open borders often allege- it is that
they want the truth to be hidden from view in the shadows!

Today,
it seems, that all too many of our leaders would sooner provide benefits
to illegal aliens than they would to the citizens they were purportedly
elected to represent.

Today,
it seems, we cannot give United States citizenship away fast enough!

Wouldn't
it be something if our government was as concerned about the keys to our
nation's front door as the owners of the garages are about the keys to
their patron's homes?

Actually,
this is a goal that is within our grasp! Our government is comprised of
people. People who serve in elected office and people who are hired and
appointed by those who owe their jobs to the electoral process.

Our
government is also comprised by the citizens of our nation!

Any
politician who refuses to work to secure our borders and create an immigration
system that has integrity is either corrupt or too dumb to keep his (her)
job. Any politician, irrespective of party affiliation who favors health
care for illegal aliens and/or Comprehensive Immigration Reform should
be shown the door at the next election!

If you
find yourself to be in agreement with this commentary, I ask that you
forward it to as many of your friends and family members as possible and
encourage them to do the same.

Next
year each and every member of the House of Representatives is up for reelection.
Next year more than one third of the members of the United States Senate
will have to face their constituents. They need to be reminded that they
work for us, We the People!

However,
the practice of good citizenship does not end in the voting booth, it
only begins there.

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The
large scale apathy demonstrated by citizens of this nation has emboldened
elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American
citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes
to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups. There is much that
we cannot do but there is one thing that We the People absolutely must
do- we must stop sitting on the sidelines!

The
collective failure of We the People to get involved in make our concerns
known to our politicians have nearly made the concerns of the great majority
of the citizens of this nation all but irrelevant to the politicians.

Michael
W. Cutler graduated from Brooklyn College of the City University of New
York in 1971 with a B.A. in Communications Arts and Sciences. Mr. Cutler
began working for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in
October 1971 when he entered on duty as an Immigration Inspector assigned
to John F. Kennedy International Airport. In August 1975 he became a Criminal
Investigator (Special Agent) for the INS at NYC.

He rotated through
virtually every squad in the Investigations Branch. From 1988 until 1991
he was assigned as the INS representative to the Unified Intelligence
Division (UID) of the DEA in New York. In 1991 he was promoted to the
position of Senior Special Agent and was assigned to the Organized Crime,
Drug Enforcement Task Force (OCDETF) which required that he work with
members of other law enforcement agencies including the FBI, DEA, ATF,
U.S. Customs and local and state police as well as law enforcement organizations
of other countries including Israel, Canada, Great Britain and Japan,
to conduct investigations of aliens involved in major drug trafficking
organizations. He retired from the INS in February 2002, after a career
that spanned some 30 years.

Finally, Michael
Cutler has appeared on numerous television and radio programs including
Lou Dobbs, Fox News, MSNBC and many other television and radio news-oriented
programs to discuss the enforcement of immigration laws.

The
problem is that there are, unfortunately, those immigrants whose presence
in our country represents a threat to national security. Among such malevolent
individuals are those who have exploited their position of trust in our
nation that their certificate of United States citizenship represents.